2010-11 Washington Wizards Preview - Can They Co-Exist? :: Around the Association

Yeah, I can see that. I think they’re actually a very good fit together and have all they physical tools and ability to play good defense, it’s just a matter of effort for Gilbert and the learning curve/effort for Wall.

Where’s LeBron and Wade at?

I never once through out the word “star” in comparison to Wall, but Tyreke Evans, Steph Curry and Brandon Jennings are all players who, last year, showed potential to be an all-star in the near future granted their teams play well. What are your qualifications to be “average”? Because I’d say that guys that were rotation regulars on playoff teams were average to above average among the rest of the players in the league and among their own teammates. That includes Wes Matthews, Taj Gibson, Brandon Jennings, Ty Lawson, James Harden and Dejuan Blair. In terms of players whos teams weren’t as competitive but still were able to make a large difference in their teams success, Steph Curry, Tyreke Evans, Jhonny Flynn, Darren Collison and Marcus Thornton all fit that bill. And Terrence Williams, Eric Maynor, Demar Derozan, Jonas Jerebko and Jrue Holiday were all able to carve out rotation or starting roles for their respective clubs. I’d call all of them average or above average. And to say that a #1 overall pick who, as a freshman, just came won multiple collegiate awards while leading his team to a #1 seed and managing to balance ball distribution among his other talented teammates, probably wont “contribute much” as a rookie, or in his second or third year, is somewhat ridiculous.

I think my opinion of average and above average is different than yours. Like I’

I’m not saying any of these guys are stars. Every single one of them showed in their rookie year that they deserve rotation minutes, whether they’re good enough to be for a playoff or lottery team is entirely up for debate but the fact that they played well enough to earn 15, 20 or more minutes per game shows that they’re solid players.

For Wall, I definitely see what you’re talking about. But he managed to get to the line at a great rate this past summer league (11 attempts per game) and shot at a decent clip. He also put up 23 and 8 per game. He’s a rookie learning the point guard position, the hardest in the league, so turnovers are to be expected. But at the very worst, he’ll be putting up roughly 14 points and 7 assists per game a rookie. And that’s at the worst. If a player not being great in two to three areas of his game (turnover rate, low free throw rate and low ts%) then nearly every player this side of LeBron James is “light on production”.

Ridnour was backing up Jennings for a reason. It’s very true that Jennings percentages were awful, and he didn’t alone lead them to the playoffs. However, there’s no doubt that they would’ve missed the playoffs had it not been for Jennings. Or had Jennings not been there during the playoffs, the Bucks certainly wouldn’t have been in the series until game 7.

The facts really don’t lie, however you look at them – Rose had solid numbers, was an all-star, and his team won. They made it to the playoffs both during his rookie and sophomore years. Though I’m not saying he’s the same player with team USA as he is with the Bulls, his defense is indefinitely above average. If you want to knock him, knock him for his lack of a jumpshot. But the guy stil gets his, and his team wins. If Kirk Hinrich has been the lead-guard instead of Rose the past few years, they wouldn’t have made the playoffs. I was merely throwing out points per game as an indicator of the impact he had on the game purely from a numbers standpoint. He’s also Chicago’s unquestioned leader. How about that?

I do like objective, stat based arguments. That said, a couple of important points. First, I’m pretty sure from a practical standpoint it’s basically impossible not to put up positive win shares. Look at Devean George’s statline in 2008-2009, for instance (it was horrendously bad), and notice he still had a .04 WS/48 for that season. That’s 1.6-1.7 WS in 2000 total minutes. Win shares doesn’t seem to take any sort of baseline into account, so just being positive itself isn’t necessarily a good thing, you have to beat whatever baseline we’re talking about (replacement level, better than average, better than the player you’re taking minutes from, or whatever else). Personally I’m not a big fan of win shares, especially it’s defensive component.

PER is a whole different beast, but also a pretty crappy metric. You need to be shooting something like sub 33% TS% to lower your PER when you take a shot, otherwise taking a shot raises your PER. It tends to jibe with popular opinion, because it’s largely a usage stat, and better players tend to get used more often, but people also seem to value guys that get used more often just for their high usage. So it does what Hollinger wants in conforming to popular opinion, but doesn’t provide very good anlaysis.

Some people around here like Berri’s metric, WP. I think it’s clearly better than both of those alternatives, but I still have reservations. I like to look at per 36 stats and TS%, and consider defense a much more gray area (and I generally assume any rookie isn’t a particularly good defender). Most of those guys got good usage, but weren’t that effective in terms of their scoring (accounting for both volume and efficiency with ~54% TS% being “average”, so anything below that generally means their scoring isn’t very helpful and may actually be harmful), didn’t put up great assist numbers, turned it over too much, etc. Rose is a good example – his 6 assists per 36 strike me as pretty weak for a PG with his usage, and while he scores a respectable amount, he does it at a below average efficiency, especially his rookie year. Throw in bad rebounding and his reputation as not being much of a defender at this point in his career, and I don’t see a very effective player. Still like his potential, and he has shown improvement when it comes to scoring, but thus far he hasn’t been all that helpful to the Bulls.

It will be interesting to watch the Wiz. A few of my friends are Wizards fans, I’ve been getting on them for just trying to recreate our franchise for the last few years. We’ll see how it plays out. I was very disappointed when you guys stole the #1 pick from us! Regardless of how this year goes for you guys, it does seem like you have some young talent.